After conducting an internal survey with a number of freelancers who use the Liveforce platform I wanted to share a few of the results.
These results will provide a glimpse into what promotional staff struggle with, what they desire and how you can take certain steps to ensure these staffers are happy and happy to be part of the team.
Below are the Top 3 findings that we found in terms of challenges and desires. Whilst there are a number of other results, these are the most notable to mention.
Survey Findings
Top Challenges Faced
#1 – Finding suitable jobs.
#2 – Finding enough jobs.
#3 – Having enough communication with the agency.
Most Desired Employee Benefits
#1 – Culture & work environment.
#2 – Regular income.
#3 – Professional insurance & legal advice.
Tips to Retain Top Promotional Staffing Talent
Below are some tips that can be actioned right away to help you retain the top talent you have.
#1 Industry Insight and Interest
This may depend on the type of promotional staff you will need – brand ambassador or product specialist – either way both of these ‘types’ or promotional staff have a head start.
Chances are they know a fair amount about the industry, brand or service, therefore, the amount of training required and development will be minimal.
This a bonus for both parties as the staffer doesn’t have to spend time on repetitive training and you don’t have to allocate resources to provide the said training.
Whilst it will probably be quite difficult to get industry or product specific promotional staff it may be that you divert your interest in the events industry as a whole.
Look to work with promotional staff who are studying or have a genuine interest in the events industry. Work experience is vital so they will have that to add to the CV as well as getting paid and being one of the A-Team in the process.
#2 Communication
Promotional staff management requires a lot of logistics which means that quick and clear communication with the agency and manager is imperative for a stress-free, productive role as a promotional staffer.
But the events industry is fast and furious and often casual promotional staff appear at a moments notice with very little time to get to know the individual. Which makes it difficult for the temp staff to get involved and feel part of the team.
There are two options with this – use a promotional staffing agency which has a database of pre-qualified, interviewed and registered promotional staff.
This still makes communication a bit difficult but the agency will now take care of relaying any information or notes that you may have.
Or, you could use an online platform that assists with managing your promotional staffers, end-to-end. This option makes communication easier and in most cases, you will be able to communicate via the platform, manage your team, create projects, automate processes and so on.
#3 Offer Perks & Pay Well
Want to keep promotional staff engaged, interested and happy to get your request? Of course, you do! You need to treat temp promotional staff as part of the team.
Give away goodies from the event, give them clothing, give them food and whatever else may be a great perk. Something else to consider is that you should be paying well.
Money is a great motivator and if you want your promotional staff to be even more motivated, then make sure they get above the average.
#4 Provide & Listen to Feedback
For the promotional staff that is looking to stay in the events industry and builds up their profile, they will be seeking any feedback you can provide. Do it.
It’s a simple task that requires you to spend a few minutes face-to-face and provide honest, actionable feedback. Obviously, gauge their interest in how likely they are to take onboard the feedback as it may be completely pointless with some but the idea is that you are providing constructive feedback to the staffers who want to grow.
Don’t just dish it out, you need to take feedback on board too.
Now with most events, it’s fast-paced and people rarely beat around the bush when things need to be done, 2 hours ago. It will be good to hear directly from a promotional staffer what works, what doesn’t and what could be improved.
When you factor this feedback over multiples of 10 you can start to build trends and common feedback that is appearing repeatedly. Also, don’t cheat and bask in the glory of positive feedback. Listen to the negatives, it’s where the progress is at.
#5 Provide Clear Guidelines
One of the most irritating things that can happen for a promotional staffer is that they don’t know what they need to do, how to do it, when to do it and where to do it.
Time is wasted chasing managers or team leaders to explain or figure things out. A WhatsApp group may be enough to eliminate or shorten the amount of time that is wasted with this but again it’s not a useful, long-term solution, especially as the season picks up and more teams and events are running.
When you provide, ahead of the event, clear guidelines and expectations you can expect the promotional staff to get on with things. They won’t have to stop and ask for advice and assistance or clarification and ultimately succeed in their role.
#6 Recognise, Praise & Reward
One of the best ways to keep a temp promotional staffer around is to follow the simple steps of recognition, open praise, and a clear reward. Matter of fact this sounds like a good formal to keep anyone around with your business.
Depending on the style of event it can tend to be a long, intensive day with a lot of interactions and meeting and be speaking with potential customers. From experience, it’s tough so it’s always nice for the team manager to recognise a staffers efforts in front of the rest of the team.
With all of the above, you should consider rewarding the standout individuals with the first refusal of future roles or add them to the top-tier, go-to team. This recognises their efforts and skills and rewards them with a high feeling of self-worth and exclusivity.
In Conclusion
Retaining your top temp promotional staff is not rocket science and it’s pretty straightforward especially with the starting points listed above.
Temp promotional staff are humans, they just have a different schedule but still desire the same perks and benefits of being full-time. It’s really not difficult to action the pointers above today if there’s an event going on that is.
